Tips for promoting an effective consulting service

Tips for promoting an effective consulting service

Tips for promoting an effective consulting service

Consulting is always a complicated area to sell online. To do this, you need to professionally rely on the tools of Digital Marketing. Here are the advice of  Web Digital Media Group.

There are some professions that don’t have an image to capture customers, they don’t sell things that users can touch by hand or try. The consulting service certainly belongs to this category and is today increasingly complicated to offer online.

What is a consulting service? Of course, it is a somewhat generic question but the answer can be unique for each sector. A consultancy service is a work service offered by a professional whose purpose is to advise and assist the client in solving a problem or in the creation of a new project.

Consultancy, of course, is an increasingly popular branch in various sectors, from economics to marketing. But how can it be promoted online? Here’s everything you need to know about advertising a consulting service .

  • Know your target and their problems
  • SEO: how to advertise a consulting service with the site
  • Local SEO
  • Local directories
  • Social Media
  • Adv on Social Media
  • Newsletter
  • Guest post and micro influencer
  • Conclusion

Know your target and their problems

The first reasoning that anyone who wants to offer a consultancy service must make is related to the target that you want to hit . Who are the hypothetical customers?

Obviously the relevance must be given to the sector. A financial advisory service hardly wants to intercept those seeking advice on social media . Having ascertained this starting point, it is good to understand what are the problems that the hypothetical client would like to solve: what are its objectives? What interests? What are the typical difficulties of the sector? In which areas are customers less experienced and in need of assistance?

Once the needs of those who could request advice have been identified, it is necessary to set up an advertising strategy on the various online channels. How to do? Read on …

SEO: how to advertise a consulting service with the site

The SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the basis of their online presence.

Any consulting service to be recognized by clients as valid and authoritative must have a website . Obviously not all websites appear on the first search pages when I type in the keyword “Consulting service + sector”. To make this happen it is very important to take care of the SEO aspect.

Without going into too much detail , SEO allows us to optimize our site both offline and online , so that it can be more intriguing in the eyes of Google. So all the pages of the site must be optimized with keywords and all the blog content must make sure they are attractive and able to stimulate the reader’s attention.

Taking care of SEO allows you to have a double possibility of results: direct and indirect. Direct means that the site can appear first in keyword searches (eg: “Verona marketing consultancy service”), indirect instead indicates the possibility of intercepting new customers by creating an interesting and useful blog for the customers themselves.

Local SEO

Encouraging a local search of your business is an excellent way to advertise a consulting service.

The Local SEO is closely related to SEO and it is a process to optimize Google search for a local service. In this way there is the possibility of appearing at the top of the Serp when a geographical location is expressly indicated in the search key .

This happens thanks to the three parameters used by Google when it returns the results: relevance, distance and evidence. In this way, those who want to look for consulting services by indicating a place of interest are satisfied with the positioning in the first pages of geographically relevant activities .

How to do Local SEO?

First of all it is necessary to optimize the site geographically, then insert all the information on the locality of competence in the sections of the site that affect the positioning. Secondly, it is optimal to fill in the form in Google My Business , a powerful Google service that allows you to enter all the data of your business.

Local directories

Another strategy to exploit is to put company data in local directories . These are nothing more than portals that group all activities and divide them by category and geographical area.

Therefore by entering your data in the main local directories it is easy to appear on the front page when a customer is looking for a business. Using directories to advertise a consulting service is essential because it allows you to target clients belonging to the same geographical area as the professional.

Social Media

In a strategy that aims to sell a consulting service, careful management of Social Media cannot be missing . With this we are not saying that a professional must necessarily preside over all social networks but choose those most suited to his business.

Facebook is undoubtedly the most suitable Social Media to promote a consultancy service; likewise LinkedIn, which is a platform entirely centered on the world of work, can be extremely useful.

However, other social networks are not to be forgotten. Instagram can be useful to those who offer consulting services on marketing , on social media or in any case on the online world while Youtube can become crucial for those who want to sell their service through small video tutorials and the like.

Obviously, the management of Social Media as well as the drafting of the editorial plan must be done in a professional way, certainly not using the accounts as if they were personal pages. The posts must be of interest and explain in detail what your consulting service can offer.

Adv on Social Media

The advertising aspect is also connected to the management of Social Media. One of the best ways to sell a consulting service is advertising on Facebook . How to do?

First of all, you need to create effective posts , which know how to strike the eye of the interested user by stimulating him to click on the connected CTA . Secondly, it is mandatory to have a good budget available ; clearly the more money to spend, the more chances there are for the campaign to succeed.

Another central element is the target . Thanks to Ads on Facebook and Instagram it is possible to select the preferred audience according to interests, behaviors and demographic aspects. In this way the ad can only be shown to those who are potentially interested , avoiding wasting budget on non-interested users.

Facebook and Instagram ads can be a great opportunity for visibility for consulting services . Their penetration ability allows to transform the so-called cold users into hot users, or to allow the activity to show itself to all those who were not aware of the service.

Newsletter

Although the newsletter is a great way to promote online counseling. In Italy it is not an extremely exploited method and it is a big shame. When we think of newsletters we mainly think of emails in which commercial proposals are listed, often “essential”.

Well, the intent of newsletters for a consulting service doesn’t have to be that. On the contrary, a consultancy activity must focus on sharing interesting and useful content with newsletter subscribers , which can satisfy the requests of the target.

The goal is to channel subscribers to click on the final CTA or to visit the website or blog article. Create interest aimed at conversion.

It looks difficult? It probably is, but it is still the channel with the highest conversion rate , so absolutely to be exploited!

Guest post and micro influencer

And here we are with perhaps the most modern technique for selling an online consulting service: guest posts and micro influencers . What is it about?

Basically it means asking someone who can talk about your consulting service. So, as far as guest posts are concerned, contact bloggers and site managers , perhaps specialized in your sector, who can write a post or article about your business.

At the same time, influencers are people who operate in your sector and who have a good following of users. Requesting their support and getting them to talk about you could be a great option for gaining new customers . Obviously you have to be careful not to run into fake influencers or people who do not care about your issue. As always, it is the numbers that count.

Conclusion

As we have seen, advertising a consultancy service is an activity that requires a lot of patience and a basic knowledge of Digital Marketing tools .

Compared to other sectors, the difficulty of not having a tangible and real product can put various entrepreneurs in difficulty. For this reason, we must rely on the creativity and the ability of digital tools to intercept potential target customers.

To achieve satisfactory results it is possible to operate totally free of charge (blog, SEO, newsletter, local directories) or by making a commercial budget available (ADV, social media). In the first case the work will be more substantial but able to bring highly qualified users, in the second it is possible to intercept new customers more quickly.

As always, the ideal behavior is to best integrate the two strategies .